LARRABEE, William Clarke, LL.D., a distinguished teacher of the M.
E. Church, was born at Cape Elizabeth, Me., Dec. 23, 1802, and died at
Greencastle, Ind., May 4, 1859. He was licensed to preach in 1821. He afterwards
sought and obtained the means of acquiring a liberal education. He entered
the Sophomore class at Bowdoin College in 1825, and was graduated from
that institution in 1828. During two terms of his college course he taught
in the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, at Kent's Hill, Me. Immediately after graduation
he became principal of the academy at Alfred, Me. In 1830 he was appointed
tutor to the preparatory class, which was formed at Middletown, Conn.,
under the direction of the trustees of the Wesleyan University, in anticipation
of the opening of that institution the following year. In 1831 he was elected
principal of the Oneida Conference Seminary, Cazenovia, N. Y., where he
remained till 1835, when he was chosen principal of the Maine Wesleyan
Seminary, Kent's Hill, Me. It is estimated that about twenty-five per cent
of the members of the old Maine Conference, as it stood at the time of
its division into two Conferences, had been under his instruction at the
Maine Wesleyan Seminary. While at this institution, he served as an assistant
in the first geological survey of Maine, in 1837, and as a trustee of the
Maine Insane Asylum. He represented the Maine Conference in the General
Conference of 1840. In the fall of the same year he was elected Professor
of Mathematics and Natural Science in the Indiana Asbury University, Greencastle,
Ind. He remained connected with this institution twelve years, and served
as acting president in l848-49 In 1852 he was elected editor of The Ladies'
Repository, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Tefft,
but resigned the place to become Superintendent of Public Instruction for
the State of Indiana, to which office he had been chosen by the people
of the State in October, 1852. The provisions of the new constitution made
an entire re-organization of the school system of the State necessary,
with radical changes in its theory and the mode of administering it, and
Professor Larrabee's whole term was occupied with this work. His term closed
in 1854, after which he was appointed superintendent of the Indiana Institute
for the Blind, at Indianapolis, but was recalled to the superintendency
of public instruction in 1856. He finally retired from this office and
from public life in January, 1859, and died four months afterwards. Professor
Larrabee joined the Oneida Conference in 1832, and was afterwards connected
with the several Conferences within whose bounds he resided, but never
took a pastoral appointment. His life was mainly spent in teaching in Conference
institutions, and in that career he was very successful. At the time he
began his academical studies there were to his knowledge but three Methodist
graduates in all New England. A considerable number of the teachers who
followed him and built up schools all over the United States were at some
period of their student-life under his instruction. He gained in a rare
degree the confidence and affection of his students. In literature, he
is best known by his contributions to The Ladies' Repository in its earlier
years. These contributions were afterwards published in a volume called
"Rosabower." His other works, all of which were published at the Western
Book Concern of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, are, "Scientific
Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion," "Wesley and his Coadjutors,"
and "Asbury and his Coadjutors."